I, like most everyone else, have been thinking about buckets a lot lately.

We all carry a bucket for the living water.  Which is to say that I am not sure if we can ever completely learn how to experience the Holy apart from something to hold it.  It may be a large bucket or it may be a thimble.  It maybe pure and clean or it may be rusted and dirty, but we all have containers for that living water.  We all have way and means through which we experience the water.  Ideally I would prefer to think that the living water is uncontained and flooding freely in my life, but more often it is not.  I have appointed times where I wet my palate (Sunday Services, quiet times, sacred readings).  I have preferred carriers for the message (my denomination, my favorite style of worship, my theological constructs).  And I have my preferred drinking buddies (sincere, but not overly charismatic, practical and deeply reflective but still enjoying life).  Though we, as part of the universal church, are drinking the same water we all have very different buckets.   And my bucket is better than yours…at least that what we all think, otherwise I’d get a new bucket.

We are told in John 4 the Samaritan woman at the well has not bucket. (read the story here if you are not familiar)  I don’t think this is just literally true of her.  I think it is spiritually true as well.  She is at the well alone in the middle of the day.  She is an outcast, possibly the town whore, and she has no one to drink with.  Though she still identifies with the Samaritan bucket, they don’t identify with her and wont be seen with her in public.  She is shocked that Jesus is even talking to here, because this request for a drink spills over everyone’s containers and makes an embarrassing mess on the floor.  It spills over the religious buckets, the social buckets, and the national buckets that everyone has a long history of using to carry their water.

And Jesus says to her, “There will be a day when every man woman and child will be without a bucket!”.

Okay that is not an official translation from the original Greek but Jesus does essentially claim that when he tells the woman, “ ²¹ “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.  ²⁵ The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” ²⁶ Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

In other words what matters is Jesus.  The thirst quenching water of Jesus who was born, lived, died, and is raised again.  The Spirit of Jesus who guides us now into a life of the cross.  The Living Water is what matters. Not the bucket we carry it in (aka the mountain you worship on).   The living water is the point, not the bucket we may or may not have for drawing the water.  This is why the ecumenical spirit is so vital to us.  It’s a recognition that while I don’t have to back away from my convictions, those convictions are not what is most important.  They are a means to experiencing life without end.  Ultimately they are all just buckets.

Don’t misunderstand me, I have still got my bucket, and I hope you have one too.  You can end up parched and lonely in a hurry when you are at the well by yourself without anything in your hands.  Although I am a denominational mutt, like any of you I have my frameworks for understanding and contacting the living water.  After much theological, and devotional reflection I would say I am a “Hypocritical Anabaptist”, which is not officially a denomination but is an honest assessment of how I view God, myself, the world and how they relate, even if I do fail to live up to it most of the time.  Though I am a Hypocritical Anabaptist (should I secure that domain name?) I have in the last month had the privilege to take part in worship of one form or another with Southern Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Cooperative Baptists, Episcopalians, and an American Orthodox Church.   To say that these constituted a wide variety of buckets would be an understatement of religious proportions.  These are visits to the well that are separate from my daily drinking habits (I mean spiritually of course =) with Ekklesia Hattiesburg, who represent about every form of bucket known to man, including the only current official member of the low order of the Hypocritical Anabaptists.  If I was to be perfectly honest there are some things about each of these other containers of the living water that I liked, some things I don’t understand, and some things I don’t really care for.  After all they are not my beautiful bucket, are they?  (FYI mybeautifulbucket.com is not registered either.)

Although that is true, something else is more true.  I tasted living water from each of them.  My dry lips were moistened in the free worship of my southern Baptist family members.   My call was nourished by in the conversations on mission I had with my Methodist kin.  My soul was quieted and reminded of its deepest thirst in mass with my Catholic brothers and sisters.  I was literally fed and given something to drink by the hospitality of the Cooperative Baptists on Ash Wednesday.  I was ushered into the first Sunday of Lent by “getting Weird” (Rev. Marian Fortner’s awesome description of the liturgy, not mine) with the Episcopalians.  And I was moved toward the mystery of the living water which forever cures thirst by the Orthodox Christians.  All of this to say that I shared a drink from some other’s buckets and the water was fine!

While we sit around arguing about the quality and validity of the buckets we each carry, the world goes thirsty and our own souls often dry up.  Whenever we mistake our containers for the living water we all suffer.  How much time and energy will we spend on pointing the flaws, holes and rust in each other’s containers?  How much energy will we spend trying to sell people our buckets, instead of baptizing them in the living water?  Our containers are not as important as we think.  If they are anything other than a means to the same living water than they are by definition idols and not tools for tasting the kingdom.  After all the living water can’t really be contained anyways.  For It is a river no man can cross and Where the River flows, everything lives.

So use your bucket, don’t worship it.

And please, literally, for the love of God, stop obsessing over your neighbor’s container.

None of our buckets are perfect and they can’t really contain all the water  regardless.

Just keep wetting your lips with the water that brings endless life….in any and every bucket you find it in.

(*** the previous views are those of Michael Dixon and not necessarily the views of the illustrious though not yet established Hypocritical Anabaptist Denomination)

For clarification:

“That haircut was a terrific decision”- You just made someone’s day

“^That haircut was a terrific decision^” - You just made someone cry, go repent

It can't be safe to drive with that - Dexter McCluster should rap a warning about it

I bring this up because my friend Mark (who really takes the imitator of Christ thing literally based on pictures I’ve seen of Jesus) recently asked me to write a paragraph for his blog’s reflection on politics.  Mark and I share a ^deep and profound love of politics^, which has become to reasonable discourse what WWF is to sports.

He asked me to give him a paragraph on what a country looks like if Jesus was President.  It was a fun idea that I answered in a way that probably reads a little less than serious.

In a land where Jesus is president.

Ironically election is no longer a divisive term politically or theologically. He is in office because he campaigned by giving everything he has away. There are no more citizens. Just sons and daughters. His cabinet is made up entirely of children. There are two laws and it is up to you to obey. 1) Give every part of yourself to God (yes even the gross parts) and 2) Love everyone on earth like they are the God in whose image they are made.
The tax code is simple: If you have more manna than you need give it away to those who are hungry before it stinks up your tent. Foreign relations take place around a large table. Everyone brings their best food and wine, and we tell stories. (I, that is Mike, will be eating with the Thai members of the family, and telling stories with the American southerners). The army trains by running wide armed at stuffed dummy replicas of the “enemy”, and then practices throwing themselves at their mannequin feet with a towel and basin. This will take some practice before they can really get between the toes. All zoos have no fences because the snakes don’t bite and the lambs use lions as pillows. Oh and we all get to talk face to face with the President anytime and anywhere we want, His schedule is surprisingly open.”

I know that to most people this sounds like childish wishes of La-La Land, and theologically speaking they would kind of be at least kind of right.  But, I would like to point out the noticeable absence of my sarcasm font.  It is absent because, as Mark points out, I actually believe this stuff.  Allow me a little space for a theological defense of this LaLa Land.

What we are really talking about here is in scripture called the Kingdom of God.  It is the DOMain over which God is KING.  In other words it is what the it looks like when God’s will is done and when God is really the leader -AKA President.  I would say that each of the things mentioned above may sound distanced from the real world, but scripturally speaking they are descriptive of what it looks like when God is in charge.

See Phil. 2:5-11 for how Jesus gets to the highest office.   See 1 John 2:1-2 for our status as children, which in my mind is a greater title then citizen, although that language is used as well in scripture.   See Matthew 18 1-4 for Jesus words on Children being first in the Kingdom.  See Matthew 22:33-40 for the only two commands(laws) that really matter to Jesus.  See for the story  in Exodus 16:15-22 on how God asks us to handle our resources when God is in charge.  For God’s cabinet meeting see Isaiah 25:6-8.  For Jesus’ strategy for how to handle those about to kill you (Judas) see John 13:1-17.  Isaiah 11:6-11 is the reference about predators now befriending their former prey, although technically I used the popular lion/lamb image over the more scripturally accurate wolf/lamb language.  And, finally, here is one verse about speaking to God constantly in 1 Thess. 5:17. Whew.

So what one might call Utopian pipe dream or LaLa Land we call the Kingdom of God.  Heaven is our name for the place where the Kingdom of God is already realized.  May your will be done “on earth as it is in heaven” is our prayer and commitment to realize these things here and now.  So I believe in LaLa Land.  I believe in trying to live like Jesus is already President and the banquet is already starting.  Hopefully as we live into this Kingdom here and now we build the foundation for it final arrival.  Almost like we are the first fruits of something else…^there should be a verse about that^.

I want to be a careful not to pretend to know something I don’t.  I realize that there is much that will still come out.  I imagine we do not know who all is involved, or to what extent.  But even without all of the legal facts in, I think it is glaringly obvious that there is a massive failure of values at play.  I would submit that even if every allegation were to end up being false, this value problem would still be readily apparent.  This value problem would it seems is also pervasive well beyond one university.

Even if every allegation levied turned out to be false, the response of school officials (who seemed to respond inadequately if at all), local police (who had first hand knowledge of Sandusky’s inappropriate behavior as early as 1998 - but chose not to pursue it in any meaningful way), and the violent reaction of some Penn State students indicate a deification of the institution over and above the love of a defenseless child.

I would like to make a simple assertion I believe to be true, although I don’t always live like it.  A person is always more important than an institution.  I don’t say “always” much, but in this case I will – ALWAYS (there I said it again!)

It doesn’t matter if you have the most storied and significant football program in the history of the world, it is far less important than even one child’s innocence and safety.  Always.  But before we pick up our stones and start throwing, perhaps we should examine whether or not we believe that about our own institutions.

When we would rather our politicians not be investigated because it might make our party or country look bad, what does that say about our values?  When we move a predatory minister to another place so our religious community wont get bad press, what is most important to us?  When we plug our ears and close our eyes to the suffering of anyone, because of the implications it has for the systems and places we love, what do we really value?

We have made “Holy” ground out of our football fields, church buildings, businesses, and political systems.  We consistently choose institutions of one sort or another over other human beings, and, it seems to me, this is always sin.

Because our “Holy” places are not that important to God

“believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²² You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴ God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – John 4

…and because God does not reside in our “Holy” places.

 ²⁴ “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. ” -Acts 17

Rather, God resides in the human being who is created in God’s own image

 ¹⁶ Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? ¹⁷ If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.”

-1Cor 3

¹² No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ¹³ This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.

- 1John 4

We should value nothing on earth more than each other.  Loving each other is the fulfillment of all God desires from us.  It is the way we love God.

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew 22

We can not love God by protecting our institutions and systems instead of each other.  Our institutions have value only insofar as they help us love, serve, and protect each other.  Our favorite team is not more important than our children.  Our preferred political party is not more important than the people they are supposed to represent.  Our business is not more important our neighbor.  And our churches are never more important than the brothers and sisters that may or may not grace it’s doors.  God places ultimate value on God’s children, so should we.  Always

May our football programs disappear in disgrace.  May our political systems fall.  May Our businesses fail.  And may our church buildings crumble if they ever become more valuable than each other.  My we always remember what God loves most.

Consider these words from Jeremiah 29….(no, not verse 11. There are other verses in this wonderful chapter)

4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.“

For Jeremiah’s original audience Jerusalem was the ideal.  It was the good old days. It was everything that religious, family, and national life should be, and would be again some day.   In many ways it was what oriented them.  Life was good or bad acc0rding to how close or far they were from their Jerusalem.  Hence the difficulty for exiles.  Those who have been cast away from the the ideal life they valued so much.  It would seem in their case, though, that his ideal was becoming a hindrance to the life God wanted them to live.

I know you want Jerusalem, we all do, but sometimes what you have is Babylon.  It is the place that you never wanted to live, it is a people you never cared to live around, and it is anything but the ideal you have revolved your life around.  It’s Babylon…the name even sounds unnatural when you say it out loud.

It is for those of us living in Babylon that Jeremiah says, “settle down”.  It is for those of us that are not currently living in our ideal lives.  There must be one or two of you out there.  Someone who is not everything they had ever hoped or dreamed they would be.  Someone who is not as successful, rich, secure, beloved, in shape, deeply spiritual or brilliant as they figured they would be one day.  Anyone?  To that “rare” person who has not achieved every ideal they have ever had for themselves, Jeremiah tells us to settle.

Settle?!!!

Isn’t that exactly what we are not supposed to do?  Aren’t we supposed to constantly push?  Shouldn’t I never settle, and never be okay with less than the ideal?  Shouldn’t I rigorously pursue every dream and goal?  Settling is for losers.  Settling is for those who don’t have the guts or tenacity to reach their ideals.

But Jeremiah says settle.  Lay down roots in the less than ideal and messed up place where you find yourself.  Go plant your garden, have your kids, eat your food, pray for your city and live your life.  Everyday. Hour by hour. In the places that don’t meet your highest expectations.   Because the danger of ideals in the end is that sometimes they keep us from actually living the lives we have been graced with.  Because if we have only eyes for a tomorrow we are not promised, we will miss the peace God has for all of us in this place.  Now.  Today.  THIS hour. In Babylon.

Perhaps those of us who orient ourselves by God need to listen to these words.  While we are careful to not live in absence of ideals altogether, may we not miss the life we have.  May we not spend so much of our lives pontificating on what should be, that we fail to be agents of the peace and prosperity God has for us all in this place, today. Let’s not miss the life God has for us in Babylon.  May we lay down our roots in the less than ideal places we find ourselves.  Lets own this world no matter how far it falls short of our dreams.  Lets plant our gardens, have our kids, build our houses, and share our tables as we lean into the peace God is realizing right now in Babylon – right under our noses.

Maybe they had reason to feel fine about the end of the world as they knew it after all

I’ll let you pick up the book to read more about the authors claims regarding the overall positive direction of our finances, education, health, happiness, crime, war, families, and environment.  I did find one thing the author mentions in the opening of the book to be pretty fascinating.

Wright talks about how we have what is called an “Optimism Gap”.  This gap is the one that surveyors have identified when people consistently report their life is getting better while at the same time believing the world is getting worse. In 2008 on average people rated their own lives as 6.8 (on a scale of 10) while saying the country as a whole was at a 5.8.  In a related optimism gap:

“A 2007  Gallup poll asked respondents about the severity of crime nationwide compared to their local community.  Over half, 57%, viewed crime nationwide as an ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ serious problem, but only 15% said the same about crime in their own community.  So not only is the grass browner on the other side of the fence, but a lot of bullets are flying around there too.”  (page 22)

 The author demonstrates that even in arenas where things are undeniably improving there is a pessimism about it’s direction on a national level, even when we acknowledge it is improving for us personally.

My glass is 50% full, yours is 20% empty

I found this optimism gap pretty fascinating, although not altogether surprising given the spirit of pessimism that pervades our public discourse.  Is this what happens when we have 24 hour news networks that profit from highlighting the bad news?  The news is now both a competitive and profitable industry, which is a little strange when you think about what that does to it’s function in society.  Bad news sells better, we all know that.  If the saying “If it bleeds it leads” is even partially true, than is it any wonder that the talking heads on our tv screens might sometimes lean toward an obsession with the morbid?  Beyond that one can not get elected, create a successful Radio talk show, or sell papers by leading with, “ehhhh, things ain’t so bad nowadays.”

Sometimes bad news bites the hand that feeds it (to us)

In the end I am left with the question of where it is that I find my orientation towards this world.  Am I a part of this gap?  Can I hold out hope for myself personally while have none for this world?  If I have no hope for this world than where am I getting my good news from?  If this gap exists in my life what does that say about where I am theologically, or how much hope do I really have regarding the Kingdom and mission of God in this world?  If hypothetically the world was getting better, not perfect, but slowly moving in a good direction, could I make sense of that as a follower of Christ?  Or does the world have to be heading to hell in a handbasket for me to make sense of it?  hmmmm what do you think?

(****As an addendum – I am in no way implicating that there are not serious and desperately broken places in our world that need to be addressed immediately and unequivocally.  We have not arrived, this much is obvious.  I am wondering whether or not things have to be getting increasingly worse in order for us to feel compelled to act in this world.  Or whether we as Christians might take too many of our cues from our culture’s media in regards to our hope in what is happening in our world)

"What's the 'LONE' crap all about, Kemo Sabe????"

So if not even the Lone Ranger is, well, LONE then we have some considering to do.  The truth we all must know deep down is that we are completely and totally dependent beings.  While each of our deepest fears might be that one day we might be forced to rely on others to feed us, bath us, and take care of us – in many senses we are already there.  We all travel together.  We are all inextricably linked together.  Dependent.  Needy.  Communal.

People often begin conversations with me about church planting, with a question or comment that indicates it is something that I did.  Like I created a seedling, planted it in the dirt I mixed, watered it with the hydrogen and oxygen I bonded, and then caused it to grow in the warmth of my radiant presence.  (This is exactly the description of Ekklesia Hattiesburg‘s origins that I wanted to put on our web page, but I got voted down…it still hurts a little)  The truth is that I don’t do much.  This is not an attempt at displaying Christian humility, this is an attempt at truth telling.  Each Sunday we meet in a building we did not pay for.  We sit in seats that are lent to us.  Our children play with toys that aren’t theirs, and are cared for by workers and volunteers who give their time to teach our kids.  The meeting place is set up by volunteers, the scripture is read by the community, and the communion is distributed by the brothers and sisters.  Each week we are treated to deep meditations on the character of Christ through music played by a group of people who give hours every week to use their talents for something that doesn’t put a penny in their pockets.  We are a choir, we are not a room of soloists.  I did not plant a church, we chose to become a family.

If you dont have the Ekklesia Band's Hymn CD yet...you are missing something great.

 So today I will take some time to say Thank You.  I believe that all good gifts come from God, and it would seem all those gifts are carried to me in the arms of Christ’s Body.

(I'm not certain, but I think he wants me to pull his finger in a helicopter)

Blurring the line is a dangerous thing, but it is not without it’s enticements.  If I am closer to God than you then I have some inherent power.  This is a power ministers often relish along with the respect/fear/obedience that comes with it.  If a minister tells you that it doesn’t exist and is not a temptation than they are, well, lying.  This hierarchy is intoxicating to say the least, and like any intoxications it can quickly lead to dark places and bad decisions.  Consider any of the 13,567 preachers who have have had huge public falls from their ivory tower.  I would like to think that I try hard to avoid that mindset and it’s accompanying garbage.  This is not because I am so spiritual that I remain unaffected, but more because I know how much I would like the arrangement.

Approximate size of my head, when my ego is left unchecked

I’m not confident in my ability to put a governor on that arrangement.  Furthermore, the truth is that I could never pull it off.  I’m not a good enough actor to convince people of any superhuman Holiness.  I have said and will continue to say (often) things like:  “I have no idea what this means” or “ A lot of people smarter than me disagree” or even “Don’t take my word for it, go ask someone with credibility”.  I can genuinely say that I know me well enough to not take my presence behind the pulpit (or in our case flimsy borrowed music stand) too seriously.  I am not currently struggling with this brand of God complex, but mostly because of a lack of real opportunity to succeed at it.

With that said I do spend far too much time applying for God’s job in people’s lives.  The God complex I suffer from is summed up very well by Jean Vanier.  Vanier is the founder of the L’Arch communities where those with and without special physical/mental/intellectual needs live together in what I think could be called a monastic community.  Vanier says the following as he gets at what is often my problem.

“When we want to change people, we have power.  We have generosity.  We have goodness.  But we create a cleavage when we want to do good things for each other”

- Jean Vanier – Living Gently in a Violent World pg 62

(first a moment to get the giggles out at Vanier’s proper though unpopular use of the word cleavage)

Despite his refreshingly naïve use of vocab there is something very deeply important for me and my God complex to hear in these words.  Even in the midst of generous goodness I can be exercising a kind of power over people when I am attempting to change them. You know how this works.  It is serving with an agenda.  It is love in a particular direction with a determined end in mind.  It generally comes from a very good place and leads to some less than ideal destinations.  It is self service disguised as charity, and I am all about it.  It rears it’s head in all kinds of places including in pre-marital counseling.  A girl is ready to marry a guy based on the idea that she will change him into another person shortly.  She is not loving him as much as loving this idealized man she will help him become later. This conditional and directional loving leads us down destructive paths if for no other reason than the fact that the change of another’s heart is outside of our strength.  I have neither the wisdom or power to determine exactly who and what you should be.  The changing of hearts and lives is God’s territory.  Loving like Christ is our calling.

Hence my God complex as I entertain questions like these in my head.

“How many times is that person going to keep doing that, we talk about this stuff every Sunday night?”

or

“How many times is this guy going to need money before he realizes what a mess he has made of his life?”

A more truthful way to translate these questions is

“Is this person going to change or am I wasting my love on them?”

I think in the end when my “Christian” love is results based, I have fed my God complex.  I have taken on responsibilities of a task for which I am neither qualified or able.  Instead of making God’s love incarnate and tangible in the life of someone I am dangling it before them like a carrot on a stick.  I hang it out in front of them to steer them where I want them to go.  Ideally when I love unconditionally I offer myself as a tool God can use for someone else’s life change, but God’s love is not a tool I can use to achieve my desired results in anyone else.   When all is said and done this misunderstanding of love does not encourage us to truly stand with each other in our brokenness and share the load.  It creates a cleavage that none of us want to see.

A Cleavage We are all tired of seeing

I’m sitting in the Houston airport waiting on a connecting flight to the West Coast.  I have done what I always do at airports.  I take on the personality of an introverted teenager whose only friends are the earbuds he refuses to remove from his ear canal.  Then I fill up on an unending stream of overpriced food.  So here I sit by my gate with ears full of “Daisies of the Galaxy” by The Eels, and a belly full of BBQ and Diet Coke.  (The Coke is “diet” because of my health consciousness.)

I’m feeling reflective and thankful, not because of the music and gluttony as much as the party we had last night.  Last night a large, by our standards, crowd of friends gathered in the cafeteria of Hawkins Elementary School and celebrated four years of existence as Ekklesia.  It felt like a little slice of Heaven on earth to me, and my theology allows me to say that more literally than metaphorically.

 I’m not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed to say that this is officially the longest amount of time I have spent in the same community of faith in my adult life. Between college, graduate school, and my own shift in ministerial location I have not been in any one community very long.  Additionally Sarah and I celebrated our 8^th anniversary recently, which means we have been together for a decade, and living in the same town together for 8 years.  I feel like I can officially say that I am rooted in a way I haven’t been since I was in grade school.  I don’t just have friends and parishioners in my life, more deeply I now have family and neighbors who I am truly living life with. 

 This kind of stability used to be a source of anxiety for me.  I never wanted to be “settled” or “routine”, because I was certain that I would be a worse person the less I moved.  I now believe that nothing could be further from the truth.  (I should have realized there was something wrong with any image that envisioned me as a shark – I have never been accused of being shark-like .)

This may or may not be what I would have registered for if Dudes got to have lingerie showers

I don’t think that it’s because I am getting older, lazier, or less adventurous.  Although I could be accused of all of these things, they are not the reason why this new stage in life is so exciting to me.  The truth is that I am becoming increasingly convinced that there was a reason that God lived most of his 33 years of human life in the same part of the world and among a relatively small group of people.  You could argue that 90% of Jesus’ life was spent in a small town, and the other 10% he mostly surrounded himself with a small group of close friends as he traveled.  I would say that indicates that most of Christ’s time was spent on the in and outs of everyday living with people.  Consequently, there may be much of the Christ-like life that we can only access when we practice being rooted a similar discipline of stability and slow moving consistency.    Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove says the following in the introduction to The Wisdom of Stability:

 “This is a book about staying put and paying attention.  In a culture that is characterized by unprecedented mobility and speed, I am convinced that the most important thing most of us can do to grow spiritually is to stay in the place we are…….stability’s wisdom insists that spiritual growth depends on human beings rooting ourselves in a place on earth with other creatures.”

 As someone who is increasingly becoming more rooted in the day to day living in one place I couldn’t agree more.  The last four years have been a process of rooting my life with many of you.  It has been the incarnation of so much of my theology that had previously been word and not flesh.  Because of this new family of mine I am learning increasingly more about the depth and value of the small daily obedience that characterizes the life I believe Christ wants for me.  I don’t care much for big shows of spirituality.  I find increasingly little value in much of the grandiosity that my faith used to revolve around.  I am plumbing communal depths that I did not know existed, and I am in love with it.

All of this is to say two things mainly.  First, plant yourself somewhere and grow old with some people.  If you are not already deeply connected to other people of faith who are walking with God on a day to day basis, please do yourself a favor and pursue it.  Stop church shopping.  Stop moving every time the mountain top experience ends.  Stop following the things that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and root yourself someplace to experience what faith looks like on a day to day basis.

Secondly, thank you.  Thank you family for showing me the face of God of the past four years.  Thanks for being relentlessly gracious, overwhelmingly loving, and tirelessly servant hearted.  Thank you for being living and breathing parables of God’s kingdom.  I see Christ more clearly because of the way that you allow the love of God to permeate the small steps you humbly take each day.  I can’t wait to grow old with you all.

Mr. T has always maintained a strong position on having nothing but pity for the fools.

This is no longer the case for me.  I am simultaneously less convinced of any one political party, while counting among my close friends people who would fall on every point along our current political spectrum.  I, like many of you, am just tired of thinking about and dealing with the politics of our day.  I don’t fit in any camp, and I think I am glad.  Some would call me a man without conviction.  Some might accuse me of not taking my duty as an American seriously enough.  Both many be true, but I also believe that maybe the part of me that finds our current political situation so repellant is actually reacting against something genuinely, and I don’t use this word lightly, evil.

Consider the following saying of Jesus in Matthew chapter 5 

21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

Many think this term Raca, was originated by the sound one makes when hawking up spit from the back of ones throat.  It’s an Aramaic term that functions to show such contempt for someone that their existence means little if anything.  You can pick whatever current phrase you might use for those you value the least and fill it in here.  It is the act of dismissing another as having no value, and Jesus takes it seriously enough that he mentions it with murder.  It is essentially the same beast.  While there may not be any literal blood on our hands, when we show contempt for each other we seek to undo the value given by the creator the other as a beloved child made in the image of God.  Murder is essentially the same thing – undoing creation.  Jesus says such activity is worthy of the burning mound of filth called Gehenna (Hell).  It has no business in the Kingdom of God.  It has no place at the communion table of Christ.  It is the opposite of what Jesus came to accomplish, which makes it in essence “anti-Christ”.

(Previously suspected as the Anti-Christ…)

I always thought the AntiChrist would be better at public speaking

And yet we have all become so comfortable with it, especially in our politics. I personally dream of the day when our politics becomes civil enough that people only throw around terms like “Fool”.  Because currently our 24 hour news stations, papers, blogs, and Facebook statuses are fattened with far more contemptuous language.  Why can’t we disagree without the other side being the spawn of Satan?  Why is everything that is wrong with the world the direct result of those on the other side of the aisle?  Why do we as Christians fill our ears, heads, and hearts with the contempt of commentators whose every word is called up from the back of their throats?  How have we become their target demographic?

Try this as an exercise.  Turn on whichever talking head you listen to the most.  While listening to them loudly spit on the damage caused by the fools on the other side, just mentally substitute your mothers name in place of “Liberal” or “Conservative” (depending on which one of them is destroying us all on your show.)  Example:

“Your mother hates our freedom, Your mother wants you to be as miserable as she is by taking away what is yours!”

“Your Mother is no better than Nazi Germany!, if she gets her way we America as we know it will be dead!”

Truthfully, if you substitute someone you love in for those fools you contemptuously dismissed, it’s pretty disgusting isn’t it?  The truth is that I would struggle to turn the other cheek to anyone who called my Mother a Nazi! (As a side note: my Mother would make a terrible Nazi.  Very few Nazis make homemade cookies for the ladies who do their dry cleaning.  Thats a scientific fact!)

There truly is a google image for everything!

The sample sentences above would violate everything I believed about how we should treat each other, and yet I am not so passionate about those same sentences directed at my brothers and sisters of a different political bent.  As followers of Jesus shouldn’t our politics be recognizable by Gods’ love, just like every other part of our lives.  Can’t we as followers of Jesus find a more creative and loving way forward in our country?  When can we be counted on to be the first to listen, consider, and love those we disagree with?

We can be right about our political opinions and still be murderously wrong in our hearts.  Until the contempt becomes more offensive to us than the disparate viewpoints we fail to follow Christ.  As long as we keep drawing up Raca from the back of our throats there will never be compromise, cooperative efforts, peace, love or anything other than politics as usual.    I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of politics as usual, it’s truly become a Fool’s Errand (- n : a fruitless undertaking)

The thin line between putting your heads together and a junkyard dog style head butt

I have read a lot of articles on the current fights and political peacocking over debt ceilings, the direction of the country, and which party is to blame for everything that is wrong in the universe.  It makes me want to start a new political party whose symbol is a scape goat, whose sole purpose is to voluntarily take the blame for everything that is wrong.  We will run on the campaign slogan “Yes We Did It!”  Then the donkeys and elephants can spend a little less time trying to pin the tails on each other.  No one from the scapegoat party will ever get elected, in fact they will get slaughtered every time, but it might force everyone to talk about solutions and not blame.

(Can you caption a captioned picture?)

I digress.

I remain woefully ignorant on economics, social systems, and politics in general, but I feel pretty certain that our collective ire may be misdirected.  It feels like our focus is misplaced.  Not unlike a dog that stares at the finger you are pointing at the bone in the grass behind it.

I currently have the pleasure of reading and discussing my way through one of my favorite books with a group of fellow followers of Jesus.  In the book “Challenge of a Disciplined Life” by Richard Foster I reread the following passage today.

This is not a political statement as much as a super creepy picture that seems to visually make the same point as Foster's quote. Don't look at it too long or you might not sleep well.

This feels like a timely word from Foster as the rhetoric of blame continues to get ramped up in our public discourse. Are we maniacally pointing at the wrong culprits? Can we do the hard work of confronting the spirits behind the institutions that we love to hate so much?  This is not to say that there are not objectively good and evil things done by our government, it’s employees, and it’s institutions.  Nor is it to say that those things aren’t important.  Rather, It seems that we focus on the fruits of our problems and not the roots.  The roots are much harder to see and are more difficult to address, but they serve as the delivery system for every toxin imaginable.  We bicker about the height of our debt ceiling, which social programs are worth the cost, and who should be taxed, all the while refusing to face our own greed, consumerism, and fear which root our politics.

I am becoming more convinced by the day that my calling as a follower of Christ is to confront in myself the spiritual roots of the rot that hangs from our collective limbs.  How much money is enough for me?  To what extent am I willing to ensure my own security in this world? Who am I to judge who deserves help and who doesn’t?  Why is it so easy to see other’s blemishes, while remaining blind to my own?  How do I open my ears to the still small voice in a world seemingly owned by the political talking yelling heads?

My problems and our brokeness will not be solved by the next great politician, or whichever party is not currently making the decisions we loath. I can vote out “those bums” and never accomplish anything.  Until I address my own spirit, and the powers and principalities which root our institutions it seems we might be swapping deck chairs while bearing down on the iceberg.

Both our faith and our limited attention spans should be focused on the spirits (good or evil) in which we are all rooted.  My salvation is not found in Washington DC as it will continue to produce nothing but the fruits of the spirits we have given ourselves to.  So I guess this should really be a public apology.  Since no one else will take the blame, allow me to do the right thing and confess – it’s my fault.  I am entitled, selfish, consumeristic, wasteful, hateful, and fearful.  These are the spirits that so often feed my soul and I promise to try and exorcise my own demons before I start naming names in Washington or anywhere else that merely represents whats wrong with me.  My Bad.